Internet Marketing News and Information
Influencer marketing is all the rage among marketers. There’s just one tiny problem.
It’s grossly underutilized.
According to a recent survey by Traackr and Top Rank Marketing, 43% of companies report being in the experimental stages of influencer marketing; another 28% said their programs are tactical. The numbers are more lopsided on the B2B side: just 15% of B2B marketers report having an ongoing, integrated program.
Source:: AdAge – Digital
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Harvard graduates that they need to help others find purpose in a world where machines are taking away some of the steady jobs and communities aren’t as stable, leading to isolation and nationalism instead of people coming together globally to solve problems.
“When our parents graduated, purpose reliably came from your job, your church, your community,” Zuckerberg, 33, said in a commencement speech. “But today, technology and automation are eliminating many jobs. Membership in a lot of communities has been declining. Many people feel disconnected and depressed, and are trying to fill a void in their lives.”
The social network Zuckerberg started in his Harvard dorm room now has 1.94 billion users around the world, large enough for the CEO to feel pressure about its impact on society. Zuckerberg has spent this year traveling around the U.S. to understand what people feel about Facebook and how they form connections with each other, after the country’s presidential election revealed deep divides.
Source:: AdAge – Digital
Facebook hasn’t lost the war against Google for publishers’ content, but it looks like it’s losing one fight.
The company said Thursday that it’s created a software extension that lets publishers easily transfer content formatted for its Instant Articles to the No. 1 competition for mobile readers in a hurry, Google AMP.
AMP pages load near instantaneously, get prime real estate in Google search results, and have seen widespread adoption from both publishers and ecommerce players such as eBay and 1800Flowers. (Pages that load faster often lead to an uptick in sales.)
Source:: AdAge – Digital
By glsoane@adage.com(Garett Sloane)
The newsroom finally has a place on Reddit.
Reporters and publications have long lurked around the internet’s so-called front page, looking for unerreported stories and a place to put links to their own. Because one of Reddit’s top rules is no self-promotion, they’ve mostly been considered spammers. But now a select few media partners have been given a pass.
The Washington Post is one of the first publishers to get a new profile page on Reddit, where it can freely post its own stories, ask me anything Q&As, and all the dank memes it wants. Advance Local’s Alabama site AL.com has a Reddit profile too, with a page for sibling NOLA.com in the works.
Source:: AdAge – Digital
Chinese authorities are cracking down on live streaming platforms and video producers this week in a hunt for content deemed too sexy, violent harmful to youth or even superstutious.
The Culture Ministry there has said that it shut down 10 hosting platforms entirely. Authorities banned 547 live streamers and ordered 30,235 livestreaming accounts to shut down.
There’s big money involved in live streaming in China, with Credit Suisse putting the market at $3.6 billion last year, up 180% year-over-year, according iResearch. Brands have been tapping into it too. Business intelligence firm L2 said that about 80% of beauty brands it tracked had used it last year.
Source:: AdAge – Digital
Two months after ZTE agreed to plead guilty and pay nearly $900 million for violating U.S. sanctions, the Chinese telecom equipment manufacturer has hired Energy BBDO as its creative agency in the U.S., according to people with knowledge of the matter.
The shop won the business after a competitive review, which was led by SRI, Ad Age learned. Representatives from Energy BBDO and SRI declined to comment.
ZTE, the fourth-largest mobile device supplier in the U.S., declined to comment on the new relationship with Energy BBDO or its U.S. marketing push, but a representative said via email that the company has “some great work and activities coming down the line.”
Source:: AdAge – Digital
Messaging app Kik Interactive is the latest and potentially most well-established company to delve into a quirky new form of driving business — creating its own digital currency.
Kik, based in Waterloo, Canada, unveiled plans for an “initial coin offering,” a process by which it sells tokens that can be used to buy services on its platform. The idea is that as more and more people use Kik, the value of those tokens, called “Kin,” will rise in value.
Interest in coin offerings is high, thanks to surging prices of bitcoin and other virtual currencies. Called ICOs, they give a wide range of people the chance to invest in a company or any other endeavor early on. While unregulated, they have proved popular, with investors spending around $330 million on tokens over the past year, according to data compiled by cryptocurrency blog The Control. Earlier this month, cloud-storage startup Storj raised almost $30 million in five days via an ICO.
Source:: AdAge – Digital
Apple defies industry logic.
Apple is the only major tech company with a default assumption that consumers don’t want to be tracked or targeted across the web. Its leaders convey a belief that your data is your data until you say otherwise. In a world where data has been called the “new oil,” how does Apple side with privacy and stay so rich?
Cynics argue that it’s because Apple depends less on advertising and commerce. I say it’s a benefit of Apple’s strategic decision to build trust with its customers.
Source:: AdAge – Digital
By glsoane@adage.com(Garett Sloane)
Instagram is testing direct response ads inside its Stories section, allowing sign-up and app-install pitches, among other salesy formats.
On Wednesday, Instagram served an ad in Stories from SumUp, an e-payment device company, that prompted people to swipe up to sign up for its service.
Until now, Instagram Stories ads have only offered broad “reach” objectives for branding purposes and not more targeted marketing goals. It’s experimenting with ads encouraging app installation, sign-ups on websites and other goals that are already part of the main Instagram ad offering, according to people familiar with the testing. Instagram Stories will eventually accomodate all the same marketing objectives that are available from buying ads in the main feed, they said.
Source:: AdAge – Digital
The Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Tech Lab recently released a blueprint of sorts that, in theory, would prevent another Methbot from happening.
Methbot, of course, is the ad fraud attack from late last year that has been crowned by some as the biggest in history. (Others disagree.)
The IAB’s effort, blandly dubbed “ads.txt,” has been applauded by both publishers and ad tech vendors as a step in the right direction in the fight against ad fraud.
Source:: AdAge – Digital